Eighty-four billion dollars. That's the total amount in fines the Department of Homeland Security has issued to 103,000 illegal aliens for refusing to self-deport from the United States. And so far they've been able to collect over a billion dollars from illegals.
The numbers show the program has more than doubled since April, when DHS had issued $36 billion in fines against roughly 65,000 migrants. The fines are calculated at $998 per day of illegal presence, capped at a five-year maximum.
The mechanism is straightforward. You entered the country illegally. You stayed. Every day you stayed is a billable offense at roughly $1,000 a pop. The administration isn't hiding the math or the intention. This is enforcement by ledger.
Immigration lawyer John Leschak, based in New Jersey, laid out why the fines carry real weight. "These are people who have homes, cars, businesses in their names," Leschak said. "The government says they stand to have all that confiscated." That's the difference between a fine on paper and a fine that restructures your life. When the government can seize the house you bought with twenty years of under-the-table wages, the incentive structure changes fast.
Charles Moore, a lawyer with the left-wing legal group Public Justice, called it what the opposition always calls enforcement: intimidation. "This administration is just churning out as many fines as it can to intimidate and harass people into leaving the country," Moore said. Which is an interesting way to describe a government charging people money for breaking the law. Most of us call that "a fine." We pay fines for illegally speeding. We pay them for parking in the wrong spot. The concept isn't new and it isn't limited to American citizens.
Sen. Alex Padilla of California took a different angle in a July 17 letter, calling the fines an abuse of authority. "The Trump Administration has abused these authorities in an attempt to frighten immigrants — many of whom are seeking a green card or who have maintained lawful presence in the United States for decades — with outrageously excessive $1.8 million penalties that are clearly intended to force them to 'self-deport,'" Padilla wrote to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Note the framing: "maintained lawful presence." If they had lawful presence, they wouldn't be getting fined. Foreigners are welcome to get visas that allow they to live and work in the United States legally. The fine exists specifically because DHS determined they knowingly didn't follow the law. Padilla is describing the enforcement mechanism and then objecting to the enforcement mechanism doing what it was designed to do.
Furthermore, DHS allows all migrants who self-deport to keep the money they've earned illegally working in the United States. And if someone can not afford to return home, they are eligible for subsidized flights home. This method also allows them to preserve the ability to return one day legally. People who DHS remove, lose that privilege.
So far more than 3 million illegals have chosen to leave the United States voluntarily since President Trump returned to the White House. With 2.2 million of those being self-deportations. Leaving no doubt that DHS' new rules are working.
The opposition's argument boils down to: these fines are too high and they're meant to make people leave. That's not a rebuttal. That's a job description.
